Does Anyone Remember TV's "Ben Casey" or "Dr. Kildare" ?

Seldom watched Dr. Kildare.

I actually found Burns and Allen while channel surfing.

I remember how surprised I was to learn that Betty Ackerman was married to Sam Jaffe. He seemed so much older than she was.

Dr. Kildare was so hot!

... were best friends growing up. But when she showed me her new back-to-school Dr. Kildare binder and I showed her my Ben Casey binder - well, we almost split up for good.

The only thing that rekindled our mutual trust in each other was when we both bought Beatles binders the next school year.

We Can Work It Out.

I also loved Emergency! and had a crush on Randolph Mantooth.

Used to watch Medical Center, too, on reruns in the summer. Doc Welby and his sidekick Steve Kiley always struck me as being more wholesome and trustworthy than playboy Joe Gannon.

Watched Energency! as well. Thought it was high drama. There was always that major crisis for the last 15 minutes of the show — car over a cliff, building on fire with explosives inside…😁

With the symbols - Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity. I can't believe I remember that!

Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.

Infinity, but I knew it was the last in a sequence on the chalkboard! 😄

I think those shows influenced me to become nurse, then doc.

And, of course, they're highly trained professionals today but back then if you had some life threatening disease only a surgeon would do.

And now, medical research is more likely to end many diseases.

But on shows like Dr.Kildare,Ben Casey, and Medical Center they almost always seemed to have someone on the surgeon's table undergoing a long, difficult procedure.

Not to denigrate surgeons. If you've been in some horrible accident, been in a traffic accident, or shot it's still a surgeon who will save your life, if possible. And heart trouble or cancers that haven't gotten too out of control.

A lot of episodes didn't survive. It ran for 10 years; Lew Grade (chief of ATV) said cancelling the show was his biggest mistake in his career.

His brooding demeanor was a turnoff for me. Vince Edwards who played Ben Casey, died of pancreatic cancer at 67. Richard Chamberlin is still a very active actor at 76.

Interesting both shows ran from 1961 - 1966

Ben Casey October 2, 1961 – March 21, 1966
Dr Kildare September 28, 1961 –August 30, 1966

I was around 10 when they went off the air, but my tween crush was Kildare.

Had a big crush on Ben Casey. She seemed to like the dark brooding type. I asked her why she was lukewarm about Kildare and she said he was too pretty.

They were the MAD satires, which I remember better than the originals.

"Make-us Sickbe" or something like that. I still remember so many Mad parodies.

Set to They Call the Wind Mariah: “The doctors say/I’m well today/And yet I still perspire/I tell the nurse/I’m feeling worse/And yet my bill gets higher…”

Mad was the best.

I wish I had all of my old copies. They'd be a blast to go back through now.

like a lot of girls my age. By the time he came out, which was much later, I had long since outgrown my crush but I was still surprised. He had been a pretty hot leading man in movies and tv in the '70s.

We were partial to Ben Casey.

I watched Hoolihan and Big Chuck every weekend. lol

Brain tumors were popular storylines, as I recall.

There was older male Dr. with strange hair.

Dr. Ben had black hair and a attitude from what I remember.

Man looked like he was 100.

If you want to see his talent at full force, check out "The Asphalt Jungle," where he portrays a brilliant jewel thief, brought down by a lecherous nature. (Everybody ought to see "The Asphalt Jungle," regardless. One of the great crime films ever made.)

More fun facts — Lived to be 93, and was married to Bettye Ackerman, who played Casey’s nurse (and maybe love interest, not sure).

I remember the show coming on, especially Ben Casey, with the infinity sign and the voiceover. But my parents thought both shows were too adult for us kids, so off to bed we went.

would let me watch anything so long as I didn't get nightmares. I still remember being angry because my favorite Friday night TV show, The Line Up, was replaced by The Twilight Zone. Was even more angry a short time later when Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop replaced my beloved Buffalo Bob and Howdy Doody. I cried more than Clarabell the clown did when that last episode ended. I wonder how many kids remember watching both The Twilight Zone and Howdy Doody, before they started school. One of the few Ben Casey episodes I sort of remember was with Stanley Addams who played a comic. Sam Jaffe (Dr. Zorba) played Albert Einstein professor types in two movies, Gentleman's Agreement and The Day the Earth Stood Still. Was Oscar nominated for The Asphalt Jungle. Played the High Lama in Lost Horizon. Title role in Gunga Din and played Ben Hur's faithful friend.

Thank you everyone for all your wonderful responses. I really thought this post would go largely ignored.

My younger brother and I wanted to watch Capt. Kangaroo. I was always happy if I could sneak in a few minutes of CK, but my sister especially would change the channel when she came into the room. My mom eventually let each of us have a week, in rotation. We got to choose shows during our week. That worked well, because you can bet we tracked the weeks better than any other part of our schedule! She also suggested that if we left a chair, we yelled saved, so we didn't fight over that either. With 5 kids in the house, anything to keep the peace.

Most of the time, we liked the same shows. I remember I liked The Monkees more than Gilligan's Island, but my older brother would watch GI on his week. Gleefully.

We all liked Soupy Sales, and I can remember my brothers and me laughing through his shows.

It is fun to think of some good times from back in the day.

John Barry's score for Goldfinger 1964. I think the music for the Fort Knox gassing is great. It was only recently that I was reminded that the first time I heard it was in a sketch on the Soupy Sales show called Philo Kvetch. I didn't see Goldfinger until years after it's release.


Do you remember the time Soupy had some of the Ratpack on?

I remember watching it while doing homework.

…somberly uttering the dreaded diagnosis “subdural hematoma.”

When I first observed surgery as a nursing student, I remember being quite shocked that the atmosphere in the OR was not nearly so silent and serious as it was on the medical shows. There was music playing, and the doctors and nurses chatted and told jokes.

That man never cracked a smile.

And as for medical cliches, almost every episode of Emergency! worked in “Ringers lactate”.

I think Mad Magazine did a takeoff on that at the time.

from my parents. The episode was pertinent in some way.

I found out I'd had an unidenticle twin who died a few hours after being born. We were preemies at ?27, 28 weeks back in '53 - I arriving first.. It was startling at the time.

The crazy thing 15+ years later was going to get my state non-drivers ID. I went to get my birth certificate.
My parents had basically switch around our first and middle names to name us.

The birth cert had my twins name, not mine. It freaked the hell outta me for a few weeks. I had to, and my dad helped me to get the documents I needed to prove that
"I" was I. It got properly changed, but woooah!